Florence Graezer Bideau is an anthropologist and sinologist. She heads the Research group Heritage, Culture and City. She received her PhD in History and Civilization at EHESS (Paris) in 2005. Since 2009, she has been a senior lecturer and senior scientist in EPFL’s College of Humanities. She was visiting professor in the Department of Architecture and Design, Politecnico di Torino (Italy) between 2015 and 2021. She is currently a member of the Doctoral Program Architecture and Sciences of the City committee and of the Habitat Research Center scientific board in the School of Architecture, Civil and Environment Engineering in EPFL.
Florence’s research interests include the relation between culture and power; heritage issues; and the making of the city from a comparative perspective, mostly between China, Malaysia, and Switzerland. She is particularly interested in developing interdisciplinary projects on urban anthropology and heritage, and in experimenting with new fieldwork methods. Her recent research has been supported by the Swiss Network for International Studies and the Swiss National Science Foundation. Her last publication Porter le temps. Mémoires urbaines d'un site horloger, awarded with the Koos Bosma Prize in Planning History Innovation 2022, focuses on watchmaking town planning of Le Locle and La Chaux-de-Fonds in Switzerland. She is currently leading the SNSF project, “Uses of cultural heritage at the Beijing Winter Olympic Games of 2022”.
Documentos
Sessions in which Florence Graezer Bideau participates
miércoles 31 agosto, 2022
The role of industrial heritage in urban development has been extensively acknowledged in guiding and legitimizing the policies and discourses implemented by governments mostly to ensure the continuity between the past, present and future. Mega-events such as sports (e.g. Olympics, World Cup, etc.), cultural (Universal Expositions and national Exhibitions), economic (trade and technology fairs) events are often opportunities used in a top-down process to reinforce the mobilization of the i...
Mega-events have been considered as a strategy to boost urban development, which shifts targets from expansion outside of the original city fabric to reuse of heritage. The bidirectional dynamic between mega-events and heritage has been emphasized, as the former brings both resources and contradiction, and nowadays, the latter is further exploited for future development, connecting its value with the need of society. However, the research on the coupling between ...
The role of industrial heritage in urban development has been extensively acknowledged in guiding and legitimizing the policies and discourses implemented by governments mostly to ensure the continuity between the past, present and future. Mega-events such as sports (e.g. Olympics, World Cup, etc.), cultural (Universal Expositions and national Exhibitions), economic (trade and technology fairs) events are often opportunities used in a top-down process to reinforce the mobilization of the i...
Sessions in which Florence Graezer Bideau attends
domingo 28 agosto, 2022
Join the conference organisers and TICCIH board members for a welcome cocktail and some festive words of introduction, in the former forge of the École technique de Montréal, founded in 1909, now part of the Université du Québec à Montréal campus.
lunes 29 agosto, 2022
Si la vallée du canal de Lachine a été le berceau de l’industrialisation canadienne, la géographie industrielle métropolitaine ne s’y est pas confinée, peu s’en faut, Outre les grandes concentrations d’entreprises des quartiers centraux, elle est constituée des réseaux infrastructuraux, d’une douzaine de centrales hydroélectriques et des ensembles manufacturiers disséminés dans une quinzaine de petites villes aujourd’hui intégrées dans l’aire métropolitaine. La conférence proposera un surv...
Join us for an informal continuation of the discussion started with the public lecture.A drink will be offered to the first fifteen people.
martes 30 agosto, 2022
Drawing on case studies from diverse social, cultural, and political contexts the papers in this session discuss the different responses to maintaining and assessing not only the physical sustainability of industrial heritage but also the sustainability of its social values and meaning.
Drawing on case studies from diverse social, cultural, and political contexts the papers in this session discuss the different responses to maintaining and assessing not only the physical sustainability of industrial heritage but also the sustainability of its social values and meaning.
Efforts to preserve industrial heritage occurs in a socio-economic and political context. But what is being preserved and for whom? And, relatedly, what is the relationship between industrial heritage sites and the deindustrialized working-class communities that often adjoin them? The keynote will consider the ways that the preservation of Montreal’s Lachine Canal, Canada’s premier industrial heritage site, has enabled gentrification processes that have forc...
miércoles 31 agosto, 2022
Les friches industrielles sont devenues des figures urbaines ordinaires et témoignent, dans les anciennes puissances industrielles mais aussi dans les pays du Sud, des transformations du tissu urbain ainsi que du fait qu’il y ait processus de qualification, déqualification et, parfois, requalification de ces lieux. Les transformations qui les caractérisent structurent aujourd’hui d’indéniables enjeux politiques, sociologiques, spatiaux et culturels.Dans le cadre de ce congrès dont l...
In this lecture, I would like to talk about deindustrialised communities, heritage and memory in the context of right-wing populism. Drawing on studies of memory and heritage, I argue that right-wing populists have cornered the market on talking about the past of deindustrialised communities. They have successfully misrepresented this rich and complex history to fuel rage, resentment, fear and reactionary nostalgia. Indeed, ‘the past’, and in particular the industr...
jueves 1 septiembre, 2022
From its construction to its restoration, immerse yourself in the now and then of this key Canadian industrial heritage site. A country’s central maritime route, a major inland port, the Canadian Lowell (using hydraulic power), the cradle of industrialization, Smokey Valley (using steam), a manufacturing hotspot, the Lachine Canal is all of this and more. For it is also a national historic site, for which
Examples from several continents, in Europe, South America, North America, Turkey, show strong continuity in the objectives that govern the reuse of industrial buildings, for example the concern to take into account the industrial heritage as a resource for urban and territorial development, or the close links that it has with culture, whether it is used to house cultural facilities or more simply to bear witness to the history and memory of the place. Increasingly, policies for the reuse ...
The use of industrial heritage is a profoundly important factor in the process of creating a sustainable economic, social, and political future for many communities occupying industrial heritage landscapes. More than ever we recognize the need for such communities to be capable of shaping and expressing their heritage in different forms in the context of current events and issues, and in doing so to inform both contemporary decision-making as well as the way their industrial heritage is re...
This lecture will argue that the landscapes of industrial heritage that can be found in different parts of the world are directly related to the place-specific trajectories of deindustrialization. In other words: the different ways in which deindustrialization impacts on local communities has a direct bearing on the emergence of forms of industrial heritage. I will differentialte between deindustrialization paths and related industrial heritage regimes in a) Anglo-...
viernes 2 septiembre, 2022
In the refusal of people in communities abandoned by industrial capital to abandon their own places, we can read an implicit critique of the mobility and unaccountability of capital, raised by those who were once inside (however tenuously or uncomfortably) and now find themselves marginalized, “left behind.” The desire to catch up again, whether through attracting new investment or transvaluing abandoned sites as tourist attractions, makes this an essentially conservative critique that is ...
